Short short Response: "A Flicker in the Night"

"A Flicker in the Night" is a reminiscence of our narrator, who describes the fond memory they have of when their mother tucked them in at night growing up and the joy of staying awake and watching tv long enough for the mother to come back in for confirmation her child's comfort and sleep status. I really liked this short short. The tv bits are believable and most readers are comforted by the tv in association with pre-bedtime rituals aspect it brings. I'm trying to think of criticisms but since we don't treat short shorts like normal short stories I'm not sure what all I can really offer that it really needs. I guess if I had to come up with somethng, it would concern the mother's character. You start out with a good introduction of the mother, but other than her scent, we know virtually nothing else about her other than that's she's married and watches television before bed also. Since she is the driving force of the story, I think she should more of an imposing figure. Also, there is little tension in this which threw me off because the ending left me wanting a little more. Does the voice switch from past to present tense on purpose? The narrator was asleep when the mother reentered but then suddenly can't sleep. Or is the narrator recollecting on the smell and that's why they can't sleep?

Response to Alyson Smith's "Swiss Cheese"

“Swiss Cheese” is an interesting story about Brett Miller, who works in a hospital as an intern I believe. My first thought about this was that it seemed like a twisted version of a grey’s anatomy episode. As Brett divulges the horrors of her past, we get a basic understanding of her motives for becoming a doctor, (I’m assuming it was the father’s death since she was pre-med at the time of her mother's murder) a small description of a suicidal inmate with a horror-filled past of his own, and after a few brief confrontation, Brett leaves the man to choose his own fate.

To begin with a couple small issues, if I remember correctly, you disliked how a girl’s name was used to represent a male character from another story we workshopped and yet, Brett is a man’s name, so there was a little confusion there. Also, do bananas gush that much? The opening scene is detailed brilliantly but I was surprised of your choice of fruit. Nothing major, just me nit picking.

I also felt like a lot of the dialogue is unbelievable, not so much the details but more of the openness that the characters have towards one another. Brett seems almost neurotic herself, but I’m very surprised she lashes out as much as she does for seemingly no reason at all. Plus I want to know more about the “dark voice” in her head. It’s only mentioned once but I feel like it should have a bigger part in the story. 

And to be honest, I thought that Jack was going to turn out to be her mother’s killer and that this was going to turn out to be her one act of vengeance after swearing to protect the lives of others and now that I look back on the ending, I think this would be a better fit, even at the risk of it sounding predictable. Right now, we have Brett’s subtle acceptance after the inmate shakes her up initially. 

Response to Molly Kirkpatrick's "Blood"

“Blood” is a story about Scarlett, (love the name by the way) who has found herself temporarily in the mental ward of a hospital and as we learn the details of her sad past, Scarlett tells her psychiatrist about how important blood meant to her and how much her own blood is precious because of the lessons her father taught her growing up.

            First off, I think Scarlett is one of the most interesting characters we’ve read about this semester. She has such a casual down to earth attitude but at times sounds philosophical and realistic, it was a pleasure to see things from her perspective and think the voice of this story is its strongest feature.

            The main point I want to understand is the motivation for why she cut her wrists. There are plenty of ways to prove to oneself that you’re still alive so why did she take a road that could have killed her if her wish was the exact opposite? That part just didn’t make sense to me. Is there supposed to be a connection or tendency to lean towards a psychotic break because of the mother’s OCD? I felt like that was a key part in the story that was left unexplored. 

            Also I wasn’t sure if I felt a definite change occur within the story. At the end it’s revealed that she has been confident all along that she wasn’t crazy, and that it was all just to prove to herself that she was still alive, all we get is a revelation exposed to the audience that was there all along. One suggestion that I think would be interesting, if you wanted, you could have her think she’s perfectly fine, but the psychiatrist discovers that she formed a split personality after the accident to cope. I’m not sure if that is too much of a cliché, but with your characterization, I feel like that could be a really good twist.  

Response: "Support Group"

“Support Group” is an awkwardly funny story about a young man (I took him to be in his mid to late twenties) who is at a meeting for people who have been sexually abused, pouring his heart out in a rambling attempt to detail how he began his current life as a chronic masturbator when he was eleven and how it has proceeded to dictate his life.

As soon as I read the first few lines, I began to laugh and couldn’t stop throughout and at the end I got the impression that you thought this up on a whim just to see how far you could take it just to get the class to discuss masturbation in full and I must say, bravo. This was very entertaining and you did a great job characterizing a man with a major insecurity but there were some things that were off a bit.

Even though I found it funny, there are some parts I didn’t quite understand. First off, I don’t know much of the narrator other than his embarrassing condition. All we have is a long narration without any setting built up and a nervous man babbling on about his problem. And second, I think you should go through and change up some of his vocabulary. It was funny the first couple of times but got old pretty quick.

I liked the entire story as dialogue but I think you could spruce it up by having other people in the group question the narrator about his lifestyle and have him justify his reasoning to compare himself to people who are sexually abused. Right now, that to me is a strong source of tension and you highlighted it perfectly with the Chris Hanson jokes and failed female interaction, but I would also like to see an expansion of that so we can get a real change to occur. He seems to have a moment of sincerity on the last page when he says he wants to help everyone else there, but then makes an excuse to leave, which I took to be just an exit to go masturbate once again. 

Response: "The Marriage of Ruth and Isaac"

“The Marriage of Ruth and Isaac” is a story from the perspective of a mother, anxiously dealing with the news that her daughter is getting married despite her young age. As she looks back and remembers her daughter when she was a little girl, she realizes now that she’s not so little, but still too young for marriage, and from the engagement announcement up and through the wedding, she silently harbors her concerns.

First off, your descriptions and imagery pertaining to the wedding scenes are excellent. You did a great job detailing each of the flower scenes without going over the top (which I’m glad because too much of that would have definitely lost my attention). This is also an emotional piece, we all know how much our parents worry about us and our futures and I think the anxiety that the narrator has about her daughter’s life with Isaac is realistic and touching, but there isn’t much tension shown right now and we don't know enough about the narrator to understand her motivation behind her fears. 

To me, it feels like there is a specific audience you’re appealing to so far, young couples who are either thinking about marriage, just married, and the parents of these groups. Adding a scene or even expanding and splitting up the first paragraph of page 2 could give you an extra dimension to the story and will help build up all the characters with dialogue. Plus I'd really like to see how Isaac complicates the plot if he does at all.

Maybe the in-laws don’t see eye to eye on wedding costs and such, or one of the families dislikes the bride or groom? Anything like that will spice up the overall tension and establish a firm conflict and change. Right now, all we have is the mother’s viewpoint and because of her passive aggressiveness, there is no established conflict. I was expecting some sort of confrontation at the bottom of page 2 or top of 3 when Ruth’s only justification for getting married is that it’s “God’s timing.” I would like to see this scenario played up a bit more as well, and maybe Ruth has other reasoning that her mother wouldn’t understand. It's great so far but I don't think it's quite finished yet. 

Response: "Safe"

“Safe” is a story told from the perspective of Alexandra, a young woman raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce. The tension of this story is located around the strained relationship between the narrator and her father and how her mother’s influence over her has affected her ability to exist with the opposite sex.

Needs better transitioning. At times the story built up the tension and all of a sudden there would be a skip in time and the narrator would be doing something completely different. The start of the second section on page two feels like a completely different beginning to the story and the split on page 5 is an awkward transition, I found it hard to believe that when Alexandra was on edge and realized her dog was missing, she’d just fall asleep.

The main character has the opportunity to be a dynamic and memorable character, but other than the fact that she is scared of men and she has a dog named Twinkle, we don’t know much about her. I’d really like to see more of the bond between her and the younger brother, he is only mentioned once in the beginning and maybe building up his character a bit could serve as a foil to Alexandra later in the story so we understand more about her personality.

As it is now, the ending doesn’t reveal a change in the character. She starts the story as fearful and remains the same through the conflict. The only change we can see is minimal during her attempt to fight back and defend herself from her assailant. If you wanted, one suggestion would be to flip the divorce situation and have her distrusting of other women but when the father turns against her, she realizes that it’s really men who she should fear.

Response: "Once in a Lifetime"

And cancer strikes again! “Once in a Lifetime” is a story told by a girl named Hema, who is speaking in the 2^nd person to a young man, Kaushik and recounting a time period in which their families shared a single home for a time. The story explores the narrator’s relationship with her parents and in turn the family’s overall relationship with Kaushik and his parents after they move back in town after a time in Bombay.

I didn’t really know how to read this story because there is a general lack of structure other than the chronological order of events that the narrator experiences and explains. I’ve also only read a couple of stories written in this fashion and as a result, it makes for quite a slow read. The constant usage of you and your in the story grabs the reader and demands full attention, assimilating and incorporating the audience through an intimate connection. 

Although it is full of real and emotional tension, there is little to no true conflict. Throughout the entire thing I was expecting a Notebook type of resolution in which the main characters are married and this is a story that she reads to him to help him remember their past together. And I was pulling for Hema’s character up until page 499 when she announced her dislike of Doctor Who and revealed little to no interest in Isaac Asimov books. After that point, I couldn’t really remain interested in the story, I was expecting a decisive climax but all we get is a short scene in the woods where Kaushik reveals that his mother has cancer. This ending, to me, left me satisfied because we can imagine what happens in the following years, but the adoration the narrator feels towards the boy is never resolved and the

Response: "the bleeps and blips of life"

“The Bleep and Blips of Life” is about Anne, a girl sitting with her comatose father in the hospital. As Anne struggles to accept that her father is in such a condition, her younger sister, Karen, comes to the hospital and the dynamics of their early family life is exposed. We learn that Anne’s parents played favorites when they were younger (at least the mother did) and as a result of much fighting and cheating, her parents got a divorce. While her father lies in the hospital, Anne and her sister try to decide the correct course of action to take. 

I love how much tension the story holds, the family ties are complex and real which gives the conflict between the sisters a firm grip on the reader, but other than some verbal disagreements, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense that the narrator needed to change her opinion. You could also add in the monetary reasons for pulling the plug or adding a phone call from the mother might shake up the narrator into taking action.

I feel like the title lacks a sense of raw emotion that I felt while reading this story because it really did move me. Almost all of us have been put in that uncomfortable situation and with a family like theirs, as readers are more invested in Anne’s connection to her sister and father. My favorite aspect was the use of flashbacks throughout the story. Although I do feel a few more small details about why their mother preferred Karen and why she disliked her first born daughter so much could boost the reader’s attachment to Anne. At this time I feel like we don’t know enough about our narrator.

Response: "Password Protected"

“Password Protected” is a narration from the point of view from a young woman named Julia who is checking up on facebook at a public library and reacting to a number of different situations and statuses put up by others, and at the same time we learn that she has been dealing with her brother’s cancer. She silently judges each one while evaluating the lives of other people, effectively hiding her own life in the process. 

I liked how the story is full of tension but overall, I felt it to be lacking true conflict. Everything the narrator focuses on is online and doesn’t affect her directly until after we learn that Thomas has died. I’d like to see more of a change in Julia. She starts out as a loving sister and ends the story as a loving sister. One way to facilitate a change would be to have her resent her brother for getting cancer because it put a strain on her family and is the reason for her moving away from her friends and school.  

And I really like the ending of the story. The idea of immortalizing someone through the internet is a very modern way of honoring their memory, but Julia’s relationship with her brother is the main focus of the story and there is only one scene in which we see the two characters interact. Adding an extra scene or incorporating more details about their past together would give the story more emotion while at the same time bringing the ending around full circle.